


vainglory

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:54:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3590187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Guti calls him at three in the morning, Raúl wasn't asleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	vainglory

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Cursory Wikipedia research, and then twisted to my own purposes.

The first time Guti calls him at three in the morning, Raúl wasn't asleep. Hugo had the cough, and Mamen was tired out these couple days from looking after him. When she'd stirred at the faint wracking coughs from Hugo's room, Raúl was already wide awake and padding across the room. She smiles at him sleepily, discernible in the low light, and flops back down, tugging the covers up again.

Hugo is sitting up in bed, sad pout on his lips when Raúl turns the night lamp on. Raúl presses a kiss to his damp curls, gives him water and curls up around him. It was worrying, how the doctors said it might be the first sigh of asthma, but they still had to wait and see for a couple of days. Raúl stares at the dinosaur shaped glow stickers on Hugo's ceiling, and strokes a hand soothingly down Hugo's back, listening to Jorge's deep breathing from the bed over until his brother's matched it too.

He's sliding in to his own bed when his phone vibrates on the nightstand. He glances at it, ready to ignore if he couldn't recognize the number. He frowns instead.

Raúl picks up, says, “Guti?”

“Raúl. I didn't know if you-” Guti's voice sounds strange, this weird rattling sound in the background warping the end of his sentence. Raúl strains to hear him. “What? Guti where are you?”

“Walking.” Guti says.

“What?” Raúl glances at the clock beside his bed. The neon green handles glow softly luminescent, pointing at half past three. Mamen is a dark shape rolled to the far side of the bed. “Are you drunk? I can come pick you up.”

“Don't worry, Raúl.” Guti sounds cheerful, and if Raúl was being honest, not drunk at all. “Just talk to me, ok?”

“What do you want to talk about?” Raúl says quietly, getting out of bed and shrugging on his coat. He slides open the door to the balcony, breathing in the night air. Madrid was never really asleep, but there was a hush, peaceful, lying over his city. He huddles in to the coat, the fabric rustling in the night breeze. Guti's laugh crackles in his ear.

“Training today. How do you think I did? With that goal?”

Raúl thinks for a bit, chewing on his nail absently. Then he replies, and Guti listens on the other side of the line.

 

-

 

The next day after training he pulls Guti aside. Looks at him searchingly. Guti's eyes were ringed with purple, but he seemed no worse than usual. Guti looks at him, odd, tips his head to the side and smiles, “What?”

“Nothing. Just- how are you?”

Guti rolls his eyes, shrugs off his arm. “Fucking horrible.”

Raúl shakes his head. “Guti. Tell me. How are you- are you okay without Arancha?”

Guti glances around them, but they were the only two left in the changing room. He leans in, says to the locker to the right of Raúl, “I can't really sleep at night.”

Raúl blinks, “What? Have you talked to a physio?”

Guti shrugs again, stuffs his towel in to his kit bag. “I just walk. I walk from my house to here and I walk back again until I'm tired enough to stop thinking and go to bed.”

Raúl doesn't say anything. There didn't seem anything he could say.

“Sorry for calling you. How's Hugo's cough?” Guti asks, concerned. He has his kit bag slung over his shoulder, runs a hand through his wet hair.

“Its fine. Hugo's okay. Mamen's taking him to the hospital again.” Raúl says. His clothes were still scattered on the bench. Guti makes a sympathetic face, mouth wry, and claps him on the shoulder in solidarity before leaving.

 

-

 

He keeps thinking Guti will call him that night, but he doesn't. Raúl lies looking at the ceiling, waiting, half expecting his phone to vibrate under his hand.The next thing he knows, its light out and Mamen is brushing her hair in front of her vanity.

She turns around when she sees him looking in the mirror. Raúl was blown away suddenly, the sweet set of her lips as she smiles, fond. She turns around, and the way she looks in that gauzy nightdress makes him wonder all over again at how he managed to marry her. She sets down her brush, and walks over, wraps her arms around him. Raúl closes his eyes, holds her close, breathing in her familiar smell.

“Hugo's better.” She says, arms propped on his shoulders, “He didn't wake up at all last night, the new medicine must be working. No asthma I think.”

Raúl looks up at her, her face not yet made up and softened by sleep. “Thats good news.” He says. Then he leans in and kisses her. Mamen makes a soft, pleased sound and sinks in to his lap.

 

-

 

Raúl doesn't keep count of how many times it happens through the season, and when that ended, the summer. Only that he became used to it, sleeping curled away from Mamen so as not to wake her up, his phone in his hand. More often than not, Guti didn't call. Months went by without a call, and Raúl doesn't ask.

It would have continued, but for one thing.

Something he can't forget- one night, they go to a club after dinner. Guti had a girl under each arm, and Raúl had no one at all, getting steadily more and more uncomfortable and thus drunker. Guti had disappeared to get more drinks, and the girls were starting to crowd around him. Raúl twists his ring on his right hand, looks at them in a way that hopefully discourages anything they had in mind.

 

The music is some thick choking beat with no room for breathing, and when he finally gets up to make his way to the bathroom he's already feeling unsteady. He tugs at the doorknob twice before realizing it was supposed to push inwards, and then stumbles in, barely avoiding a puddle of someone's vomit on the floor. Raúl's lightheaded, made worse by the fact that he's trying really hard not to breathe in anything. He gradually registers the sounds of heavy breathing and moans from behind the stalls with a sense of discomfort. Raúl's washing his hands when Guti walks around the corner, followed by a short, dark haired man.

 

Guti stops when he sees Raúl at the sink.Their eyes meet in the mirror. Guti's face looks like a corpse's in the flat white light, but perhaps thats just what it made everyone look like.

Raúl swallows, forgetting to hold his breath. Suddenly everything in the enclosed space makes him feel nauseous, and he has to lean against the basin. Guti steps forward, opening his mouth like he wanted to say something, a sharp, hot look in his eyes.

Raúl waves him away. He hadn't noticed when Guti's companion had left. Now it was just Guti, his shirt still rumpled and untucked around his pants. Raúl fights the urge to walk over and smooth them out.

“Raúl ...” Guti says, almost like a sigh. He walks up to Raúl, far too close.

Raúl says, “How bad is it, Guti?” his eyes were drawn to the dark purple marks, mouth shaped, printed on his collar bones. He doesn't know what he means, just that his stomach feels like its turning itself inside out. A vast, inexplicable fear that chokes the words in his throat.

 

Guti looks at him. His eyes were sunken in hollows, blue like electric wires, bloodshot. “Bad.” He says, one little word, and tucks his face in to Raúl's shoulder.

Raúl reaches around slowly, wraps his arms carefully around Guti. He holds Guti like someone might hold delicate china. The porcelain basin digs in to the base of his spine, but Raúl holds his weight till Guti leans back.

Then his hand was warm, slipping up between Raúl's shirt and his ribs. All of a sudden, Raúl sees everything about Guti, his mouth tinged pink and swollen, his eyes that disbelieving shade of blue. And he sees how it would happen too, Guti's eyes already half lidded, his blonde hair flopping over his forehead as he leans in and-

The kiss lasts for a heartbeat, and then Guti is drawing back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as though he couldn't believe what he'd done. Raúl didn't have time to say anything at all before Guti laughs, high and derisive, and stumbles out of the bathroom.

 

-

 

Raúl doesn't try to bring it up immediately the next time they meet, at practice. He waits till afterwards, but by the time he gets to the car park, Guti was long gone.

He ends up calling Guti, afterwards, in the small hours of the morning. Guti picks up almost immediately.

“Guti.”

“What are you going to do?” Guti asks. His voice crackle and shiver down the line. Raúl thinks about Guti walking down that long deserted road to Valdebebas, the wind stealing the words out of his mouth.

“What do you want me to do?” Raúl says in to the phone, eyes closed. “You can't keep going like this. We can talk to Schuster, get you help.”

Guti doesn't say anything. Theres no silence between them, just the wind on the line, and all of a sudden Raúl can't handle it any more. Guti walking alone, under the terrible orange streetlights on the highway.

He says, “I'm coming to get you.” He waits a beat, but Guti doesn't protest.

He drives by Guti, walking with his hands in his coat pockets, a hat over his head like some overcautious disguise against other people that might be driving to Valdebebas in the middle of the night. Guti pulls open the door, slides in. Raúl doesn't start the car immediately, only looks at him, waiting.

“I'll do it. I'll tell them.” Guti sighs. He's a boneless mass on the shotgun seat, hair wispy and white under the streetlights. He looks to Raul.

“Raúl-”

Raúl doesn't wait to hear it, just tugs him closer, wants to press his unutterable love in to Guti's bones with all the fierceness he can muster.

Instead he tells Guti he's going to be okay. He's going to be okay. He's going to be okay, and holds him until he stops shaking.

 

 

-

 

Its really not about fairy tales. Its really not about happy endings, or soul mates, or a sense of – home. Its not the trophies they've lifted together, the balls they passed to each other, their jerseys hung up on the walls next to each other, the arms they've thrown over each other.

Raúl doesn't know what it is, except only, Guti's mouth around a coke bottle, his own name from Guti's lips. His fingers, peeling oranges in the summer, stained with citrusy mist. Guti running with the ball, his feints, his perfect backheel passes. Guti kissing the crest with his hair plastered in strands to his face with sweat, half hysterical with pride. The way he looks in victory, smiling with all his teeth. The way he looks in the instant before he makes the shot for goal. His blue eyes, his blonde hair, his thin wrists and his bird like collar bones. His strength, running through him like the brightest thing Raúl will ever see.

Those are the things Raúl thinks about when he thinks about Guti. Then there are the ones he doesn't, couldn't think about, wrapped around his heart like cellophane.

 

_In his dream, Guti is climbing in to his lap, that smirk on the corner of his mouth, crooked._

 

 

_-_

 

Instead of thinking Raúl watches. He covers for Guti when he can, brushing off questions on why Guti seemed so tired some mornings, how he snaps without warning sometimes. How he often stays in his own room when they play away games, doesn't come out till its time to leave for the stadium.

Guti doesn't quite avoid him, but there are no more calls in the middle of the night. They don't go to clubs together, unless someone from the team is there too. Karim and Gonzalo looks over at Raúl sometimes, when Guti's gesticulating his plans for the night in the locker room. Raúl pretends everything's normal, then picks a time after training to wait by Guti's car.

Guti's face is shuttered, his hand a fist around his keys.

“Raúl .” He says, strained.

“Are we going to be okay.” Raúl says, not quite a question. He forces his voice to be even.

“Yes. We're fine.” Guti says, not looking at him. “But- you can't-” He puts a hand on Raúl's chest, flat above his heart, or where the crest would be if he was still wearing it. Guti's hand clenches the fabric of his shirt. Raúl couldn't move, or reach out to hold him. “Don't ask too much of me.” Guti finishes, and gets in to his car.

After a year, two, Guti gets better. There are still circles under his eyes more often than not, but he keeps it together. There is no more that hysterical edge to his laugh, and his face doesn't resemble a skull with skin stretched too tight over his cheekbones.

There is this, too, after a while- He watches Guti stroll over to Sergio during training sessions, wrap a conspiratorial arm around his neck and pull him closer. Then they're both grinning, punching each other on the shoulder. Sergio's face looks appealingly boyish, lights up when Guti leans in to him. They're always with each other these days it seems. It goes unspoken, but no one misses the way they leave by the same car and arrive to practice together.

Raúl turns away.

 

-

 

They could have stayed like that for well, not always, since _always_ in football meant only _this season,_ and had as much weight as _I love this club._ In reality it only lasts two more seasons.

Raúl feels his injury like a premonition, a twinge in his leg that sets his teeth on edge. He signals for the swap, watches Karim stretch on the sidelines. With absolutely no foresight, he pushes forward only because its what he does, and he knows in his heart that this injury would mean he's out for the rest of the season, and in the end he only has to reach out a little to make sure the ball rolls in to the net-

 

Scoring the goal made leaving no easier.

 

The day after he knows, for sure, that he's leaving Madrid, Raúl rummages through his closet for his kit. It was folded, neatly, behind a stack of plaid shirts and t shirts, neglected for the past couple months. He takes it and shakes it loose, spreads it on the bed.

 

So here is the truth of it- he played for the team in white. The white that can never be stained with shame. He'd stained it with everything else- blood and dirt and grass and sweat, and he'd made it his own. Raúl stares at it, spread out on the covers, the gleaming crest and the straight black stripes stark against the white. Laid out like this, his name hidden from view, the anonymity of his own jersey seems to mock him. He feels, suddenly, the self destructive urge to go to the kitchen and pull out a pair of scissors from the drawer, cutting the jersey so small he'd never see so much white again.

 

So here is the hurt of it- spreading its iron cold fingers through his lungs until he can't breathe. He doesn't go for the scissors. The shirt returns to the drawer, folded neatly, reverently. Raúl sits on the bed till the sun dips and Mamen comes home, calling out quizzically why he hadn’t turned the lights on.

 

-

 

He calls Guti the day before he was supposed to leave for Istanbul. He'd wanted to do it before, but it had somehow escaped his mind, because there always seemed to be something else to do, new people to call, houses in Gelsenkirchen to look at. Mamen and the kids were away, visiting Mamen's parents, so when Raúl had busied himself out he finds himself at a loss.

He calls Guti, thinking how strange it was that he doesn't remember the last time he made a call on non madrid business.

Guti says, cautious, “Raúl?”

“You're leaving for Istanbul tomorrow, right? Come over and get dinner with me?” His voice sounds strange to his own ears. It felt unsafe, suddenly, having Guti here with Mamen and the children gone. Before he could change his mind, Guti says, “I'll be there in half an hour.”

Raúl waits by the kitchen counter with a spread of take away leaflets, waiting for Guti to show up. He arrives carrying two plastic bags of food.

“It's going to go bad. I'm leaving tomorrow, so we're going to cook.” Guti announces, putting them on top of Raúl's flyers.

Raul trails around after him, watching Guti find all of Mamen's pots and pans from the cupboards. Mamen never made him help, always shooing him gently out of the kitchen to entertain the children. He was good with that, but Guti's efficient and brisk in directing him around, cutting the cabbage, boiling the water.

They wait for the stew to boil while watching reruns of Villarreal versus Sevilla from last season, Guti sprawled on one of the couch and Raúl the other. Guti throws peanuts at him, and Raúl attempts to catch them in his mouth. He gives up in the end, snatches one out of the air with his hand and eats it. Guti swears at him, laughing. Raúl wonders, suddenly, how he'd managed to seal this away for the past two years. To see Guti here again, loose limbed and sleepy eyed on his couch, the remote on his chest as he frowns at the tv.

It hurts, somehow, though it shouldn't. It was too late to feel the hurt. Raúl looks away.

 

“When did you learn?” Raúl asks later, spooning chickpeas in to his mouth.

“Like, a year ago maybe. After-” Guti waves his hands vaguely, Raúl taking it as a fill-in-the-blank. _After Arancha_. “I had to learn sometime. Can't live on takeout forever.” Guti pauses with his fork in his mouth. “It was tempting though. Since we eat lunch at practice.” He glances at Ra úl, smiling.

 

 

 

-

 

Raúl washes the dishes and Guti dries them, an efficient team. Raúl's not sure how they do this, the fitting back together as though they were never away, but they do. Whatever nebulous thread they've woven to keep each other at just the right length away for the last two years had snapped, just like their futures at Real.

Instead Raúl thinks. He thinks- they've known each other their whole lives, and it turns the food in his stomach sour suddenly, the knowledge that- he's never lived in a city that didn't have Guti in it. Raúl stares at him, helpless, feeling old, _old._ Guti looks back, confused. He closes the cabinet door, holds out his hands uncertainly to Raúl.

“Raúl.” Guti says, eyes soft. He steps closer, puts a hand on the back of Raúl's neck, looks in his eyes.

Raúl can't seem to meet his eyes. He drags Guti over blindly, wraps his arms around them. Guti was stiff in his arms at first, and then he sighs and relaxes. Guti runs a hand through Raúl's hair, murmuring comforting nonsense.

Raúl leans in and fits their mouths together. He'd half anticipated Guti freezing again, but this time it's as though he knew, before Raúl had even made half a move. His mouth opens under Raúl's, hungry, and he pushes Raúl back against the cabinet, their bodies flush together.

When they break apart, Raúl opens his mouth to say something, anything, but Guti leans close, the tips of their noses brushing. He breathes, “Shh.” And Raúl does. And then, “Come to bed.”

And Raúl lets Guti lead them to the bedroom, hand around his wrist.

 

-

 

Guti straddles him, grinning, that vicious smirk that shows all of his teeth and Raúl wants, Raúl wants so badly he groans out loud. Guti finds the condoms and lube in the drawer. Raúl looks on, dumb, and Guti says, 'Raúl.' Just one word, his eyes closed, lashes trembling as he slicks fingers inside of himself. Raúl swallows, thick, twists his fingers in the sheets and sets his teeth.

Guti sinks in to his lap, his fingers braced on Raúl's shoulders, bottom lip caught in his teeth. Raúl holds his hips, buries his head in the hollow of Guti's throat. Then Guti's moving, curses and praises falling out of his lips. Raúl is caught up in Guti's heat. Guti holds both his wrists back as he rides him, eyes fierce.

"Raúl. Raúl. Raúl." Guti says, over and over. And Raúl closes his eyes, kisses his mouth and everywhere else he can reach.

 

Sometime in the morning, Raúl half wakes when Guti's leaving. He only has a faint memory of it, blue dawn, tips of Guti's hair brushing his face as he leans over him. Guti presses a kiss to his shoulder, and perhaps he said something too, perhaps _mi amor_ , or maybe that was just the wind rattling the windowpane.

He wakes up alone. The sky outside is blue, summer warm. The electric sort of blue without a trace of cloud anywhere, the trees sighing under their burden of leaves.

 

-

 

Gelsenkirchen was warm in the summer and rainy in the winter, and Qatar was hot all year round and never rained at all, and New York was stifling for two months out of the year and freezes him to the bone the rest of the time. Raúl doesn't think about it when he moves, just knows that every couple of years he wants to leave, gets an itch in his bones. Had he really stayed in Madrid till he was 35? So he hands in the application, says the words again, _I thank the club, the fans, thank you for the great years I've had,_ and he thinks he means it. He switches on the tv sometimes and he sees Guti in white and black and an armband, scoring, passing, a flame on the pitch.

Maybe he misses Madrid, maybe, but he doesn't return till seven years later.

 

-

 

Raúl stops by the vendor selling oranges by the corner, feeling nostalgic. In the distance he can make out the Santiago Bernabeu, and when he turns around, the heavy plastic bag smacking against the side of leg, Guti's strolling down the street to him. Raúl raises his right arm awkwardly, keeps it there for a while. Guti's expression twists funnily, and he starts walking quicker.

They embrace quickly. The back of Guti's jacket was sun warmed, Raúl closing his eyes for second before Guti steps away. They meander down the street, swapping stories sporadically, arms brushing.

In the end they sit down on a bench in a park, and Raúl tosses an orange to Guti, who catches it with a pleased noise. For the moment it was nice to sit there, watching the kids in front of them kick a ball back and forth. Raúl glances at Guti from time to time, taking in little details. Guti's hair was short. He fits his clothes well. There's an ease in the way he sprawls, popping slices of orange in to his mouth. He catches Raúl's eyes, finally, knocks their shoulders together.

“So. No ring?” Guti asks, eyes shuttered. The tips of his fingers skim over Raúl's hand.

“No.”

Guti doesn't say anything at all. He's 10 years too late, Raúl thinks, despairing.

“Guti. I-” Raúl starts, but Guti stops him, then, a finger on his lips like a strange echo of Raúl's own celebration, so long ago. Raúl tries to remember what it felt like, to burn and burn and be unstoppable against everyone and everything. But he thinks he wasn't, not really. Not in the way that counts. And he couldn't recall feeling young, not in this Madrid fall, the leaves a carpet under the soles of his shoes, exhaustion weighing down his body.

 

But Guti's smiling, finally, he's leaning in, and his mouth tastes like oranges.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So this article (http://www.managingmadrid.com/2015/3/16/8223231/cristiano-ronaldo-real-madrid-2015-news-analysis) came out regarding Guti's struggles with depression, and I'm just a vast hole of sadness at this : “Guti also revealed that he virtually went to pieces after the split; and to such an extent that he used to walk the two hours every day from his home to the training ground and back, since this was the only time he could focus his mind on what had happened.  He told the audience that when at home he found that he could not deal with the separation, and when at training or matches he was simply expected to perform.”   
> writing this fic was a little like pulling out my own teeth and swallowing them. I.e, I don't really know why I did and everything hurt the entire time. I had to though. I did. All comments appreciated <3


End file.
